American Bible Society Museum to close down. Built 3 years ago for $60 million. Only $54k annual ticket sales

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

The American Bible Society will be closing down its Faith and Liberty Discovery Center, around three years after the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based museum, which cost around $60 million, had opened.

In a press release emailed to The Christian Post on Monday morning, the ABS announced that the center was ending operations on April 1, with the last day for public visits to be March 28.

Full refunds will be given to those who bought tickets to visit the center after March 28, according to the ABS.

The center struggled from the onset, receiving only around $54,000 in ticket sales for the tax year of July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, while reporting total expenses of around $11 million, according to a statement of revenue.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/american-bible-society-to-close-down-60-million-museum.html

The museum held its grand opening ceremony in July of 2021, coinciding with the city’s annual Wawa Welcome America Festival, with the ABS proclaiming that “guests can explore 25,000 square feet of interactive gallery space featuring groundbreaking technology.”

“Their journey through the museum will be guided by a handheld smart lamp, which they can use to digitally capture favorite Bible verses, quotes, and stories to revisit once they return home. Each gallery offers a new immersive experience,” explained the society.

“In one gallery, guests will come face-to-face with 21 American Changemakers whose lives and legacies were shaped by God’s Word. In another, guests will be able to listen to a soundscape of songs and Scripture read by American icons like Johnny Cash. And during a one-of-a-kind theater experience, guests will stroll through the streets of historic Philadelphia as they watch William Penn’s quest for religious freedom unfold.”

[ms liberty]

1. Aww. Thoughts and prayers.

[TheBlackAdder]

34. God's Will

[edisdead]

2. All that fuckin money

All that fuckin money could have gone to actually help people.

Christians don’t know who their Christ is. Makes me sick.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

5. I wonder what business or museum will move into this fancy place

[Liberal In Texas]

33. Oooh, a Smart Lamp! The whole thing looked boring. Most of it looked like pictures and text, something you could

probably look at on a home computer if you were so inclined. I think the smart lamp gimmick novelty would wear off after about 10 minutes.

Not surprised it went belly up.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

37. it needs 1. a ride similar to Disneyland's "it's a Small World" or "Star Tours", 2. A cafe, 3. a gift shop to buy tat

4. theater where 3 times a day actors put on a show complete with show stopping tunes.

[BOSSHOG]

27. I figure 800,000 meals on wheels

But NOOOOOOOO. And it was a money making effort. Did trump having anything to do with it?

[marble falls]

3. Who's eating the $60 million?

[lindysalsagal]

7. I hear there are one or 2 gullible xtian investors laying around, if you're willing to look.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

9. " The Christian ministry nonprofit that translates Bibles and sends them around the world has recently been besieged wit

The Christian ministry nonprofit that translates Bibles and sends them around the world has recently been besieged with challenges including layoffs, funding troubles, and five CEO changes within two years.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/american-bible-society-faith-and-liberty-discovery-center-closing-20240318.html

[DBoon]

17. why not pray for better management?

[Biophilic]

4. At least it tells you why the Christian leaders are getting desperate and scared.

Most people just aren’t into their Christianity.

[3auld6phart]

6. No

Fecki’ n loss there

[lindysalsagal]

8. Funny, how the sales pitches for the thing never promise to make the enormous word salad

make any sense.

If they could, they'd be a hit, for sure!

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

10. it looks boring, to be honest. At least the Noah's Ark guy realized they needed a hook

building an actual Noah's Ark shaped building is the hook. No one on vacation says "let's go to a Bible based museum".

[lindysalsagal]

11. It only got the few tourists because it's surrounded by all of the other Philly tourist museums.

So they couldn't have done better in any other location. That's not what killed it.

[homegirl]

26. If there had been

a Guttenburg Bible on display thay might have drawn more visitors.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

38. good idea. some historic artifacts

[intheflow]

43. Shroud of Turin, perhaps?

And a piece of the cross he was crucified on. 😂

[progressoid]

45. Jesus' foreskin?

Apparently there are a few of them floating around out there....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce#History_and_rival_claims

[modrepub]

40. I Suspect Most "Good" Christians

wouldn't want to venture into Philadelphia to visit this place. Faux news is too prominent and reenforces certain stereotypes about big (blue) cities.

[Blue Idaho]

12. Good!

Now I want to see some of those big evangelical churches hanging For Sale signs on their front doors.

[AllyCat]

13. Hahahaha!! 😂

Perfect.

[Silent Type]

14. Should have put it in Branson.

[BOSSHOG]

29. Or Las Vegas

With bright lights and Christian slot machines.

[Initech]

15. Imagine if they spent that money on something constructive.

[Sky Jewels]

25. Something that is grounded in reality, like a natural history or biodiversity museum.

Not something based on dumbass Bronze Age stories.

[lamp_shade]

16. Who the hell thought THAT was a good idea?

[hatrack]

18. Next up - Ark Encounter!!!!!

As for the American Bible Society Museum,

[LeftInTX]

21. Man..I thought it shut down....darn....

[hatrack]

22. Alas, no . . . but it's not exactly setting the world on fire for attendance.

Ed. - For June last year, it boiled down to about 3,700 visitors per day on average. That's about 1/12th of Disneyland's daily average in 2019.

Attendance at Ark Encounter was slightly higher this past June compared to the same time period a year ago, but the numbers are still smaller than what we saw before the pandemic shut the place down. More importantly, the numbers are nowhere near what was projected when the Ark first opened.

Thanks to a public record request by local paleontologist Dan Phelps, we now have the numbers for June. You can read more background about how it’s calculated here.

The bottom line? Ark Encounter had 111,256 paying visitors in June. That’s a bit more than the 102,639 people who visited last June, but not even close to the 124,230 visitors they had in June of 2019. Given the record attendance they had in February, this appears to be something of a letdown, but it’s still early to tell with so few data points.

Here are all the attendance numbers we know along with the Safety Fee that Answers in Genesis has paid to the city of Williamstown. (The public nature of that fee is how we know the attendance numbers at all.)

EDIT

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/ark-encounter-attendance-improved-049

[LeftInTX]

23. I'm surprised. It sounds really boring.

I would rather go to a bible museum, assuming the bible museum is actually a museum.

[Takket]

19. spending $60 million on a museum that is really a church seems like a poor business decision consdering the amount of

competition.

[Swede]

20. Holy fuck that sounds boring.

Yawn.

[Sky Jewels]

24. Ha ha ha!

I guess people weren't interested in visiting the Steaming Pantload Mythology "Museum."

[maxrandb]

28. God works in mysterious ways!

[TexasDem69]

30. Sounds like an interesting concept

But the location seems like a terrible decision. Somewhere in the Deep South or a place that already attracts tons of visitors (DC?) makes more sense.

[intheflow]

44. The thinking was probably

that they wanted to legitimize Christian nationalism by placing it in the “Cradle of Liberty.”

https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-an-imperfect-but-undeniable-cradle-of-liberty/

[Goodheart]

31. If I wanted to be so bored I'd go to church.

[sakabatou]

32. Tots and pears

[Hekate]

35. Can you imagine how much good the Carter Center could have done with $60 million?

You want “American Changemakers? “ Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter get my vote any day, for just going forth and doing good works for humanity..

[Xolodno]

36. I went to a very interesting Bible museum and it was very enjoyable.

Lot's of relics, history, etc.

It was called The Vatican. Beyond that and a few others I went to nearby, I probably wouldn't bother with any Bible museum here in the states.

[NanaCat]

39. LOL

You might have had more visitors if you'd had some animatronic exhibits of Lot and his daughters, or scenes from Song of Solomon. Oh--and that kidnapping and raping women of Shiloh to force them into marriage.

And for the violence crowd, how about those bears eating bratty kids, or the mass murder of the Amalekites, Canaanites, Edomites, Moabites, and so on (and on and on and on and...)? How about that mass murder of the innocent citizens of Laish whose sole crime was minding their own business?

Or why didn't they combine the sex and the violence with the murder, rape and pillage of the Midianites, and the subsequent trafficking of young girls into sex slavery?

Come on, you have to know how to appeal to your audience, and Americans have gorged on sex and violence as visual entertainment for well over a century.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

41. Obviously, they failed to include the pornographic parts of the bible.

[John Shaft]

42. Imbecilic